[Exclusive] Taiwan Boosted by Jensen Huang... Supercomputer Rankings Now Neck and Neck with Korea

Supercomputer Performance Ranking in Top500: Taiwan Advances from 17th to 11th in 6 Months
Ubilink Emerges as Asia's Top Computer Excluding Japan and China
Result of NVIDIA Support and Domestic Investment Commitment
South Korea Maintains 10th Place... Individual Supercomputer Rankings Decline
National Supercomputer Installations Delayed Due to Budget Shortages

The supercomputer Ubilink installed in Taiwan. In the TOP500 ranking announced on the 18th, this supercomputer ranked 31st, the highest in Asia except for supercomputers installed in China and Japan. Ubilink also played a decisive role in Taiwan closely pursuing the supercomputer performance held by South Korea. Photo by ASUS

In the race to secure supercomputers among countries, Taiwan has been rapidly closing the gap with South Korea. Analysts attribute this to the combined effect of proactive investments by the Taiwanese government and private companies, support from GPU supplier Nvidia, and Taiwan's related infrastructure.

At the ‘Supercomputing 2024 (SC 2024)’ event held on the 18th (local time) in Atlanta, USA, Taiwan was ranked 11th in the national rankings of the ‘TOP 500’ supercomputer list, following South Korea. Taiwan was ranked 17th in May but jumped six places in six months. The TOP 500 list is announced every May and November. South Korea maintained its 10th place as it did six months ago, significantly narrowing the gap with Taiwan. A representative from the domestic supercomputing industry expressed surprise, saying, "The gap between Taiwan and South Korea has narrowed significantly."

Taiwan’s rapid growth in supercomputing was greatly influenced by the addition of Ubilink. Ubilink is Taiwan’s largest AI green energy computing center, established as a joint venture by Foxlink Group, Ubitus KK, and New Fox Energy. Ubilink ranked 31st with a performance of 45.82 petaflops, the highest ranking ever for a Taiwanese supercomputer. One petaflop means the ability to perform one quadrillion mathematical operations per second. Even within Asia, excluding supercomputers installed in Japan and China, Ubilink achieved the highest ranking. Although Taiwan has only seven supercomputers included in the TOP 500 list, Ubilink’s high performance propelled it to a high position. South Korea has 13 supercomputers, about twice as many as Taiwan.

Taiwan completed the installation of Ubilink in just three months, a record in the supercomputing industry. Ubilink explained that they were able to quickly finish the installation thanks to active support from GPU manufacturer Nvidia and cooperation with domestic server manufacturer ASUS. This reflects the Taiwanese government’s ambition to significantly expand its AI foundation centered on Nvidia, TSMC, and domestic server companies.

Taiwan’s investment in supercomputers is expected to grow further. Guo Chaiming, who operates Foxlink Group which invested in Ubilink, emphasized at the recent Ubilink opening ceremony that "Taiwan’s AI computing power has stood out globally," and announced plans to invest an additional 2 billion New Taiwan dollars for phase two of the project. He added that preparations for land and power for the additional investment have also been completed. Guo also introduced plans for customers in the pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors to use the supercomputer for research. Guo Chaiming is the younger brother of Guo Taiming, chairman of Hon Hai Group, the manufacturer of Apple products.

Hon Hai is also driving supercomputer adoption through cooperation with Nvidia. They are not only upgrading factories with the latest technology using Nvidia’s technology but also securing AI supercomputers.

The Kaohsiung Supercomputing Center project, unveiled at last month’s Hon Hai Tech Day, aims to build the fastest supercomputer in Taiwan based on Nvidia’s latest Blackwell GPU. This supercomputer is scheduled to be operational next year.

Backed by Blackwell, Taiwan is expected to attempt to surpass South Korea in supercomputing. It is reported that Korean companies and research institutes are having difficulty securing Blackwell GPUs. Hon Hai Group aims to use this to conduct research in cancer treatment, large language model (LLM) development, and smart city fields, positioning Taiwan as a global leader in AI-based industries.

Unlike Taiwan, South Korea’s supercomputers showed a clear decline in rankings in this TOP 500 list. Naver’s Sejong, which was the highest-ranked Korean supercomputer at 25th in May, dropped to 40th, and Samsung Electronics’ SSC-21 fell from 32nd to 48th. Kakao Enterprise’s Kakao Cloud rose from 44th to 41st, and SK Telecom’s Titan improved from 73rd to 63rd, but these gains were insufficient to offset the overall downward trend. NHN Cloud’s Gwangju AI appeared at 98th. The National Supercomputer Nurion, operated by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), dropped from 75th to 92nd and is likely to fall out of the top 100 in the next ranking. The Korean government had planned to introduce the sixth national supercomputer last year, but the plan was delayed due to a sharp rise in GPU prices. The government has increased the budget this year and is re-pursuing the project with a target introduction in 2026.

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA (left), is attending the opening ceremony of the supercomputer Gefion held in Denmark last October, together with King Frederik X of Denmark (right). Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

In this TOP 500 ranking, the El Capitan supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the United States was newly crowned the fastest supercomputer. El Capitan, based on AMD CPUs and GPUs, recorded a performance of 1.74 exaflops. Besides Taiwan, individual computers from countries ranked lower than South Korea in the national supercomputer rankings, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Denmark, were ranked higher than South Korea. In Denmark’s case, Gefion, whose opening ceremony was attended personally by Jensen Huang, ranked 21st.

Meanwhile, Chinese supercomputers have not been prominent in the upper ranks of recent lists. The industry interprets this as a result of China’s reluctance to disclose supercomputer performance due to concerns about US restrictions.